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Middle East and Egypt (6th–10th c.)Politics and state

Ahmad ibn Tulun rules Egypt: al-Qata'i and the Mosque of Ibn Tulun

Sent to Egypt in 868 as deputy of the Turkish general to whom the province had been assigned, the soldier Ahmad ibn Tulun took over its finances, raised his own army and, while the caliphate was paralysed by turmoil at Samarra and the Zanj war, made Egypt virtually independent, adding Syria in 878. His new capital, al-Qata'i, and its great mosque (876–879), modelled on those of Samarra, announced a new dynasty, the Tulunids.

Date
15 September 868 – 10 May 884exact date · duration: ≈ 16 yearsDate in the Julian calendar
Place
Al-Qata'i: Mosque of Ibn Tuluntoday: Cairo, Egypt · Middle East and Egypt
Participants
Ahmad ibn Tulun, Tulunids, Al-Muwaffaq, Abbasid Caliphate
Threads
Middle East and Egypt (6th–10th c.)
Also known as
Tulunid Egypt; Al-Qata'i; Mosque of Ibn Tulun; Ahmad ibn Tulun; Тулунидский Египет; Аль-Катаи; Мечеть Ибн Тулуна

Ahmad ibn Tulun came to Fustat in September 868 as deputy of Bakbak, a Turkish commander at Samarra to whom Egypt had been assigned and who is regarded as his stepfather. Within four years he had driven out the hated fiscal agent Ibn al-Mudabbir, taken over the collection of taxes and, when ordered to act against a rebel in Palestine, bought slave soldiers — Black Africans and Greeks — to build an army loyal to himself. In 868 or 870 he founded a palace city north-east of Fustat, al-Qata'i, with quarters for his troops, a hospital and a great mosque — a conscious rival to Samarra.

When al-Muwaffaq, the regent in Iraq, demanded more of Egypt’s revenues for his war against the Zanj, open conflict broke out (875–876); an army sent against Ibn Tulun in 877 achieved nothing, and in 878 the caliph al-Mu'tamid entrusted him with Syria and the Byzantine frontier. A revolt by his eldest son al-Abbas in 879 ended in the son’s defeat and imprisonment. In late 882 the caliph al-Mu'tamid, a virtual prisoner of his brother, tried to flee to Ibn Tulun, who was waiting for him in Syria, but was intercepted on the Euphrates and brought back (February 883); Ibn Tulun then had an assembly of jurists at Damascus denounce al-Muwaffaq as a usurper. He died in May 884 after a failed siege of Tarsus, and his son Khumarawayh succeeded him unopposed — the first time, as Thierry Bianquis observes, that a governor of so large and rich a territory was openly succeeded by an heir claiming power by inheritance.

The Mosque of Ibn Tulun, built in 876–879 of brick with carved stucco decoration and a spiral minaret recalling those of Samarra (perhaps rebuilt in 1296), is the oldest mosque in Egypt to retain much of its original form; when the Abbasids reconquered Egypt in 905 they razed al-Qata'i and left only the mosque standing. Ibn Tulun’s rule marked a turning point: for the first time since the pharaohs Egypt ceased to be a passive province of a foreign empire and became a political power in its own right, and his realm heralded the break-up of the Abbasid caliphate into regional dynasties.

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Connections

Related events

  • Arab conquest of EgyptDecember 639 – September 642 · Middle East and Egyptal-Qata'i was founded beside Fustat, the garrison city of the Arab conquerors of Egypt
  • Al-Mu'tasim founds Samarra, the new Abbasid capital836 · Middle East and EgyptIbn Tulun was trained at Samarra, and his al-Qata'i and its mosque were modelled on the Abbasid capital
  • Ifriqiya under the Aghlabids800 – March 909 · Africain 880–881 Ibn Tulun’s rebel son al-Abbas invaded Aghlabid Ifriqiya and was defeated near Tripoli by the Ibadis of the Jabal Nafusa
  • The rise of the Samanids in Transoxiana819–900 · Central and Northern Asiaaccording to his biographers, in 815/816 Ibn Tulun’s father, a Turkic captive, was among the slaves sent as tribute to al-Ma’mun by the Samanid Nuh ibn Asad
  • Zanj RebellionSeptember 869 – August 883 · Middle East and Egyptthe Zanj war tied down the caliphate’s forces and gave Ibn Tulun his opportunity

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9th century

Sources

  1. Wikipedia (English): Ahmad ibn Tulun
  2. Wikipedia (English): Tulunids
  3. Wikipedia (English): Mosque of Ibn Tulun
  4. Wikipedia (English): Al-Qata'i
  5. Wikipedia (Russian): Ахмад ибн Тулун
  6. Wikipedia (Russian): Тулуниды
  7. Wikipedia (Russian): Мечеть Ибн Тулуна
  8. Bianquis T. Autonomous Egypt from Ibn Ṭūlūn to Kāfūr, 868–969 // The Cambridge History of Egypt. Vol. 1: Islamic Egypt, 640–1517 / ed. C. F. Petry. — Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. — P. 86–119.
  9. Swelim T. Ibn Tulun: His Lost City and Great Mosque. — Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2015.